Shoshone Overview- Aimed at Deity Pangea play

sun8119 said:

Turn 193 SV on deity? Care to share any screenshots or saves?

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Here's a screenshot.

Replay/save file? Not as proof, but for learning purposes.

PlotinusRedux said:

Here's a screenshot.

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nicely done! can you post the initial save? I'd love to try sub 200 SV again too. (I've done once with shoshone t195 before)

Hi. You many academies do you guys get on average? I played a game on immortal and followed this write up. I'm used to Civ 4, so i only did build 1 Academy and then just started bulbing. I had Education ~ 1 AD and instantly got universitys + garden where it was possible.

PlotinusRedux said:

Here's a screenshot.

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Well done.

You had 4 academies (not 3), if i read your screenshot correctly.

well, 3 observatories probably went a long way towards helping the sub200. and 3 good coastal spots for trade routes. 38/33/33/28 before t200 is also impressive. that looks like a somewhat perfect storm of map conditions. really nicely done.

glory7 said:

nicely done! can you post the initial save? I'd love to try sub 200 SV again too. (I've done once with shoshone t195 before)

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Here's turn 1--I don't have the initial one, but all I've done is move the settler next to the mountain. It is a near perfect map for this strategy.

Note this is with Babylon, though the name is Dad3-Shoshone--I had been trying out the Shoshone strategy and forgot to change the name when I tried it with Babylon.

For any purists, I did have Legendary Start set for Resources, and I may have added a few city states beyond the default--I do that sometimes, I don't remember if I did in this one or not. And of course I reloaded 20-30 times until I started next to a mountain and the coast....

Oh, and I forgot--even non-purists may have a problem with this--I had barbarians turned off.

Moriarte--Yes, you're correct, I did have 4 academies.

Strick3lr--I build academies with early GS's (until around Scientific Theory), then save the rest till the end game. Bulbing gets you science equal to your output over the last 8 turns, so I don't use them until my science output is at or near end game levels, and then if I can after 8 turns of Golden Age with any cities that can building research.

Paszczak said:

Yeah I've no idea why the OP would suggest that you propose the World's Fair as soon as possible and pour all your hammers into it. He seems to take winning the WF for granted, when on Deity it's far from that, especially when you only have 4 cities capable of producing .

Perhaps he's just been lucky with it, but in my games I can bribe the AIs into wars all I want, and there'll always be at least one who will put 1000+ in 4 or 5 turns. It's just impossbile to compete with that in a peaceful game, so 9 out of 10 times you're better off putting just the 350 required for a free SP and call it a day. It's just not worth the risk when there is so much stuff to be build in early Industrial Era (Schools, Factories, etc...).

Not to mention all these times when one civ does T90 banking and rushes Forbidden Palace and another one goes for Printing Press and founds the Congress so you can't even propose the damn thing to begin with.

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Trying the OP's strategy and on Pangea, I've only lost the World's Fair once--and that was when I had spammed farms and ignored production. Pangea usually means the first Congress is before Forbidden Palace because everyone has met each other--the one time I didn't get propose World's Fair, one of the AI proposed it. If you're having trouble winning it, maybe switch your cities to more production focus during the race, and even bulb a Golden Age for the production bonus if you have to.

PlotinusRedux said:

Here's turn 1--I don't have the initial one, but all I've done is move the settler next to the mountain. It is a near perfect map for this strategy.

Note this is with Babylon, though the name is Dad3-Shoshone--I had been trying out the Shoshone strategy and forgot to change the name when I tried it with Babylon.

For any purists, I did have Legendary Start set for Resources, and I may have added a few city states beyond the default--I do that sometimes, I don't remember if I did in this one or not. And of course I reloaded 20-30 times until I started next to a mountain and the coast....

Oh, and I forgot--even non-purists may have a problem with this--I had barbarians turned off.

Moriarte--Yes, you're correct, I did have 4 academies.

Strick3lr--I build academies with early GS's (until around Scientific Theory), then save the rest till the end game. Bulbing gets you science equal to your output over the last 8 turns, so I don't use them until my science output is at or near end game levels, and then if I can after 8 turns of Golden Age with any cities that can building research.

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Thank you for the save! I played it up to astronomy (t108):



maybe I read your note too late - after finding 16 CSs, I just deleted 2 scouts.

one unlucky thing (compared to your screenshot) is that byz planted 2nd city toward me, so I could not settle near gem+salt+sea resources. I planted all 4 cities coastal (3 observatoriable)

3 city NC to 4 city tradition. timed culture and oracle so that I could open rationalism and secularism at the turn I got astronomy.

I went iron working fairly early and got colossus (I believe that it is totally worth it). I could even get HG. Dido killed Pacal and everyone (except me) denounced her. I bribe other civs occasionally so that I do not have to build units.

P.S. Oh, and I noticed that you turned new random seed on - while it was tempting to use it to pop writing (which could be a huge advantage), I did not do it.

PlotinusRedux said:

Here's turn 1--I don't have the initial one, but all I've done is move the settler next to the mountain. It is a near perfect map for this strategy.

Note this is with Babylon, though the name is Dad3-Shoshone--I had been trying out the Shoshone strategy and forgot to change the name when I tried it with Babylon.

For any purists, I did have Legendary Start set for Resources, and I may have added a few city states beyond the default--I do that sometimes, I don't remember if I did in this one or not. And of course I reloaded 20-30 times until I started next to a mountain and the coast....

Oh, and I forgot--even non-purists may have a problem with this--I had barbarians turned off.

Moriarte--Yes, you're correct, I did have 4 academies.

Strick3lr--I build academies with early GS's (until around Scientific Theory), then save the rest till the end game. Bulbing gets you science equal to your output over the last 8 turns, so I don't use them until my science output is at or near end game levels, and then if I can after 8 turns of Golden Age with any cities that can building research.

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I continued, but failed to get sub 200 SV. My guess is that I would have finished around t205.

Main difference between you screenshot and my t193 (I stopped playing at t185, but what it would had been if I had continued) is that your gem+salt city has 38 pop and mine has 24 - and I could not find any uranium source. Your Nippur had higher pop than I did too. (33 vs 26) My spt was around 1450 at t180-185 (and that was when I started building spaceship parts...)

I almost got all WLTKD, and used all cargo ships for internal food, and even built hermitage and got 5 culture CS allies to get many policies, but I could not get that internal route +50% policy (had to choose spaceship policy).

Not sure why my growth was a lot worse than yours, and would love to learn from what you have done.

1. When did you hit plastics and finish apollo?
2. I saw a citadel and another GG - when were your wars and what you gained from them?
3. How did you manage your culture? I only got full tradition, patro until scholarism, full rati, and order up to 3rd policy (so 4 more in addition to free 2 tenets). I even ran musician guild fairly early. Maybe my hermitage timing was bit late..

What the hell is scramble map?

Glory,

I can't fully answer your questions because I only have a handful of saves from that game--I set autosave to once per turn, and only do a named save when I'm ending a session, and the autosaves have been overwritten.

One thing I always do is set Food Focus and manual specialists control, and only work research, artists, and writing specialists unless others don't decrease turns until growth or I need a temporary production boost.

At the end, the 38 pop city was producing 118 FPT, with a 40% bonus to left over food (15% from Tradition + 25% from We Love The King Day) and with medical lab for the etra 25% carry-over.

The GG's would have been from stealing workers--I don't remember who it was against, someone that just kept marching units for my archer to kill.

From the messages, I completed Apollo on turn 177.

Half my culture (130/turn) is coming from city states.

PlotinusRedux said:

Glory,

I can't fully answer your questions because I only have a handful of saves from that game--I set autosave to once per turn, and only do a named save when I'm ending a session, and the autosaves have been overwritten.

One thing I always do is set Food Focus and manual specialists control, and only work research, artists, and writing specialists unless others don't decrease turns until growth or I need a temporary production boost.

At the end, the 38 pop city was producing 118 FPT, with a 40% bonus to left over food (15% from Tradition + 25% from We Love The King Day) and with medical lab for the etra 25% carry-over.

The GG's would have been from stealing workers--I don't remember who it was against, someone that just kept marching units for my archer to kill.

From the messages, I completed Apollo on turn 177.

Half my culture (130/turn) is coming from city states.

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thank you for the answers. It seems that we followed similar path, so I assume your micro was better than mine. It would be nice if you could share your strategies at the game of the month series.

Internal sea trade routes are just insane. In my latest game, I put all 4 cities on the coast, built granaries first in the 3 additional cities and built cargo ships in the capital to re-base from them, and had all 3 send food to the capital. Along with 2 wheat, a banana, and a fish and Sun God (+1 food from wheat and bananas) and Tradition, I hit 23 pop in the capital at turn 100. I tried to build the +6 food wonder but got beat to it.

34 in the capital at turn 125. From 23 to 34 in 25 turns. Insane.

Hmm, so I ended up with 57 in the capital and an SV on turn 197--4 turns later than the game where my top city has a 38 pop. And the capital did have a mountain by it.

The biggest differences seemed to be (1) I was trying Pacal rather than Bablyon, and ended up with 2-3 less GS's; and (2) Venice was in the game and took out 4-5 CS's, including all the faith ones, so even with the 8 faith from step pyramids, I only had enough faith to buy one GS.

Oddly, I ended with about 200 less science per turn than the 193 game, even though my pop was much greater.

Can you post the ending save so I know exactly how you won so quickly? Just want to get idea of policies, city management, etc.

Undefeatable said:

Can you post the ending save so I know exactly how you won so quickly? Just want to get idea of policies, city management, etc.

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That would be very helpful. I have asked for the save before, perhaps PlotinusRedux missed my post.

PlotinusRedux said:

So, merging the ideas from here with some I got elsewhere and using Babylon instead of Shoshone, I just got my first sub-200 science victory ever--turn 193, 1330 AD, and on deity.

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Decided to play your save However, my SV winning time was very bad in comparison - only turn 240. I am not really sure what the main problem was. I can see that:
1. City growth was not sufficient (To balance production I usually let the city grow at least every 9 turns or less, never more than 10. Usually fewer turns for my capital)
2. Too little culture

In Short:
NC was up at turn ~90. Had 2 Culture CS as friends and 1 merc. was my ally. After around modern era had 2 Culture CS as allies and many more CS as friends.
Was going to build colossus but Dido built it before I even started so no production loss here.
Had 3-5 friends and 3-4 RA in place.
Worked only science specialists and artists/writers (if more specialists used then it is either too little growth or production)
Love king day was pretty much non stop at least in Babylon.
Also Spaceship parts take ages to build since the latest patch
Tech path is usual concentrating on the upper part of the tree Education -> Scientific Theory -> Plastics. Maybe it should be altered slightly since I missed the amount of trade routes I have. It seemed that 5 trade routes lasted forever and the last 3 came only very late in game.

From here, I took:
(7) For Social Policies, go Tradition->Rationalism->Order->Patronage;

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I took Commerce opener and only later Patronage

(8) Get loans from friends by selling GPT for flat gold;

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Took a few times for science buildings but I could afford 2 buildings at most.

To that I added:
(10) Build at least 3 of your cities on coasts, because sea resources give lots of food and

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done

(11) Since you're fine for cash from the above, use your sea trade routes to give your cities +10 food and +10 production. I had always assumed internal trade routes meant transferring food and production from one city to another--it doesn't, that food and production just magically appears out of thin air. +10 food in the BC era is insane.

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I had 2 sea trade routes send food to Babylon. The rest were used for gold though. I did have 3 caravans too. Maybe I should have used only cargo ships but I used caravans to complete CS quests for trade routes.

(13) I did build opera house in all cities so I could build hermitage, which didn't take much to do and more than doubled my culture over what is recommended here. I used the extra culture to nab that top-tier Order policy that increases food and production from internal trade routes by 50%--+15 food or +15 production per internal sea trade route!--and rather than getting consulates, I went down the left side of the tree as far as the policy that gives you 25% of CS ally research. I was raking in enough GPT--over 200--to just buy CS's outright.

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Built opera houses but I guess too late in game and I did not get that Order policy. Also Hermitage was avail to build right before Apollo.

whoah what an amazing starting spot O_O

Gonna have to try it myself !

Equator said:

Is this strategy impossible to use on a desert start?
What can I improve?

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Do you have a mid and late game save too? City placement is huge, especially for defense...